Obama, GOP Argue Past Each Other on Campaign Finance

Obama, GOP Argue Past Each Other on Campaign Finance

Article excerpt

In his weekly radio address, Obama berates Republicans for
blocking campaign 'reform and transparency.' Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell says it's all just a 'transparent effort to rig the
fall elections' in Democrats' favor.

"Money is the mother's milk of politics," Jesse Unruh, the "Big
Daddy" of California politics, said many years ago, and it's still
true today.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the
2007-2008 election cycle was fueled by $5.8 billion in itemized
contributions to state and federal campaigns. House and Senate races
this year are projected to cost $3.7 billion, according to the
center, most of it from businesses, unions, political action
committees, and other special-interest groups.

Former US Senator Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings (D) of South
Carolina recently made an important (and scary) point about the
poisonous nature of this political mother's milk:

"In my last race in 1998 to be elected the seventh time to the
United States Senate, I had to raise $8.5 million," he wrote. "That
factors out to $30,000 a week, each week, every week, for six years.
You don't start collecting money the year before your re-election
date. Rather, you are in constant fundraise mode."

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court took a big whack at the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the so-called McCain-
Feingold law), allowing unlimited corporate or union spending in ads
for or against a candidate on the grounds that limiting such
spending would violate constitutional free-speech rights.

There was a time when campaign finance reform was much more
bipartisan. But no more.

As columnist Mark Shields pointed out on PBS's NewsHour Friday,
McCain-Feingold had the support of 55 House Republicans - plus, of
course, the 2008 GOP presidential candidate back when McCain was
still a "maverick." A related proposal now, which would simply
require disclosure of corporate campaign contributions, had just two
House Republican supporters, Shields pointed out. …